Stasys Matulaitis (24 October 1866 – 10 April 1956) was an activist of the Lithuanian National Revival who became one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania.
Educated as a physician at Moscow University, Matulaitis joined Lithuanian public life from an early age.
He contributed short correspondences to Aušra and increasingly became involved with the publication and editing of Varpas and Ūkininkas (he was their editor-in-chief from 1895 to 1897).
[1] Due to his involvement with the smuggling of illegal Lithuanian publications, he was exiled to the Astrakhan Oblast and the Komi Republic for three years.
As a result, Matulaitis was dismissed from his posts and spent the last years of his life in poverty and obscurity writing texts openly critical of the Soviet regime that remain unpublished.
[2] Already as a student at the Marijampolė Gymnasium, influenced by his teacher Petras Kriaučiūnas and classmate Jonas Mačys-Kėkštas [lt], he joined the Lithuanian National Revival.
[7] Matulaitis faced substantial difficulties editing the newspapers as they were published in Tilsit in East Prussia and materials had to be continuously smuggled across the Russia–Prussia border.
[9] These realist works, considered to be of low artistic value by modern literary historians, reflected Matulaitis' political views and served a public function – a call for action for a better future.
[9] Similarly, in his literary criticism, Matulaitis rejected aesthetics and demanded that the literature serve a public function.
[12] Influenced by positivism, Matulaitis published several translated works on popular science, including chemistry and geology textbooks.
[14] Matulaitis frequently visited Vilnius and maintained contacts with socialist activists Andrius Domaševičius and Alfonsas Moravskis [lt].
[14] They, together with other leftist contributors to Varpas, Kazys Grinius and Juozas Bagdonas [lt], decided to establish the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania in 1895.
[17] He was not arrested due to lack of evidence, but was accused of "political disloyalty" and ordered to relocate to the interior of Russia in June 1898.
He spent three years in Sasykoli (Astrakhan Oblast) and Ust-Sysolsk (now Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic) working as a physician.
[19] Despite continued police surveillance, Matulaitis resumed his public activities: organizing local sections of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, contributing articles to social democratic press (including to Darbininkų balsas, writing for Varpas and Ūkininkas.
[27] At the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Matulaitis was once again drafted to serve as a military doctor, first in Vilnius and then in Moscow.
[31] Nevertheless, in later Soviet historiography, Matulaitis was not considered a "true Bolshevik", was harshly criticized for ideological mistakes, and serious deviations from the general line of the party.
He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania and Byelorussia, but did not join the institutions of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic proclaimed at that start of the Lithuanian–Soviet War in December 1918.
The company was shut down by the Lithuanian police and Matulaitis faced as many as six criminal cases for publishing communist literature.
[34] He continued to be active in public life – worked with a local workers' union, delivered lectures, was a member of the city's council.
He was arrested on 13 February 1925 and accused of organizing a communist revolt – Matulaitis claimed that the police planted explosives that were found in his possession.
[35] In Russia, he lectured on the history of Lithuania at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West and worked as a physician, first in Moscow then in Leningrad.
[38] At the same time, he published popular science brochures and was one of the editors of Lithuanian-language newspaper Raudonasis artojas [lt].
In the newspaper, Matulaitis published articles critical of the Lithuanian communist leaders in Moscow, Zigmas Angarietis and Vincas Kapsukas.
[38] Kapsukas, in turn, accused Matulaitis of still harboring petty bourgeois ideals, of not being a true Bolshevik, and of making ideological errors.
He was already 80 years old and received a special state pension for merits to communist causes, but he continued to be involved with public life.
[42] On 10 November 1950, during a session at the Academy of Sciences, Matulaitis publicly criticized Juozas Žiugžda [lt] and his brochure on the historical friendship between Russia and Lithuania.
Matulaitis called out Žiugžda for making many mistakes, for portraying Lithuanians as a moribund nation that achieved nothing by itself and everything that it did create was only thanks to the Russians.
[44] In his diary, Matulaitis agreed that he was unfit to work at the institute because he could not falsify history as required by party officials.
[46] He wrote his memoir, the history of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, and other texts which were openly critical of Stalin, Vincas Kapsukas, and communist regime in general.